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Business analytics
outsourcing to India is gaining momentum, but the model is substantially
different from the traditional IT-BPO outsourcing call center customer service model.

In the last five
years, an explosion of data, coupled with a worldwide low-growth phase, has put
pressure on companies to optimize their business decisions. Companies such as
Lenovo, Pfizer, and Target have built analytics competency centers in India or
hired analytics partners to leverage data smartly.

India, as a geography,
is an unmatched analytics hub because of its pool of talent in quantitative
disciplines like mathematics and economics, says Pankaj Kulshreshtha, a
Bangalore-based Senior Vice President of Analytics and Research at the
NYSE-listed Genpact. “There is also the adjacency to IT telemarketing services that provides
useful context and the technology background,” says Kulshreshtha, who oversees
a team of 6,000 employees.

For India, analytics
is a major shift away from the process discipline of traditional IT and call center outsourcing, where the competitive advantage is in running large-scale,
standardized processes efficiently.

“The difference is
that analytics is not a back office operation, but a front-and-centre
ingredient of a company’s strategy,” says Vinay Ramesh, Lead of Client Services
at Bangalore-based Analytics Quotient. “In some ways, it is every company’s
secret sauce.”

With analytics
partners, customers are having the classic consulting conversation as they look
to tackle problems in areas such as supply chain, sales and marketing
optimization, or risk management. In choosing a partner, a high level of
analytical and technical competence is essential, as well as the experience of
applying those competencies to solve real world issues.

Teams experienced in
handling large amounts of data are invaluable, especially those with members
having advanced degrees in statistics and economics -- not the standard number
crunchers or stats geeks but those who can work to derive insights from the
data, says Robert Gannon, VP of Marketing Strategy and Insights at the
restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday.